Part 9 (1/2)

Humans are not born free of experience Iical endowh ever new hu Neither are humans born free of the evolutionary cycle of the species The relative decline of the olfactory in huo With the relative loss of sensory experience, knowledge corresponding to the respective sensorial perception di and practicing language, of existence as language Relating oneself to the world in language experience is a condition for knowing and understanding it The language of the natural surrounding world is not verbal, but it is articulated at the level of the elementary sensations (Merleau-Ponty's participative perception) that the world occasions, when hued in the practical atte to change or to master their world They perceive this world, after the experience, as stabilized s: clouds offer the hope of rain; thunder can produce fire; running deer are probably pursued by predators; eggs in a nest testify to birds The co us increases over ti to literacy are of a different degree of complexity than those faced in industrial society and than those we assume today

Between the senses and speech-hence between nonverbal and verbal languages-nunitive condition different from perceptions and are processed differently Speech adds intellectual information to the sensorial information,the present and the absent Interestingly enough, we do not know everything that we understand; and we do not understand everything that we know For instance, we eometries, parallels en, two gases Or that the use of drugs can lead to addiction Nevertheless, we do not necessarily understand how and why and when

Within the civilization of literacy the expectation is that once we knorite so, we automatically know and understand it And if by soe is incority through so or can be e accu has failed us repeatedly within practical experiences that transcend its characteristics and necessity, we have learned that the relative stability of the written is a blessing in disguise Compared to the variability of the speech, it is , exactly because knowledge and understanding are context dependent Within relatively stable contexts this shortco is noticed only at rare intervals But with the expectation of higher efficiency, cycles of huet shorter

Increased intensity, the variability of structures of interaction, the distributed nature of practical involvee and understanding As a result of these prage in equivocal and auous ways Acceptable, and even adequate, in the practical experience of poetry, drama and fiction, of disputable relevance in political and diplouity affects the literate formulation of ideas and plans pertinent to ical purposes

The saration ofin the acquisition and dissee

This addresses concerns raised in the opening lines of this section Fast-changing knowledge can be acquired through means adapted to its dynamics As these rae, the experience of accessing knowledge beco the transitoryit Many practical experiences are based on knowledge that no other means, literacy- based means included, could effectively ery at neuronal levels to the deployment of vast networks, which support not only e-ful huineering-focused understanding and a whole new ga knowledge never before available, matic framework of the civilization of illiteracy

Univocal, equivocal, aes are on record Behind each of these there is a practical experience in respect to which natural language functions in a less than desirable e on record that addresses left-hand/right-hand biases There is one, authored by S H

Elgin, in which gender biases are reversed (Ladan) And there is Inda, a language constructed like a work of art There are exotic languages written for certain fictional worlds: JRR

Tolkien's Elvish, or the language of the Klingons of Star Trek fae of the yobbs in A Clockwork Orange And there are scientifically oriented attelan to be a logic language Sotos Ochado (ale based on the classifications of science Soned by Ramon Llul (celebrated in history books dedicated to precursors of the digital age), was to be a language of endary Abbess Hildegard, is a language of practical monastic experiences extended well beyond the perfores we ie attee functions In so barriers a a better description of the world, with the implicit hope that this would facilitate e is not a neutral nification, but comes loaded with all the characteristics of our practical endeavors, prejudices included,an iardless of the intention, and especially of the success they had, such languages allow us a closer look at their cognitive condition, and hence at their contribution to increases in the efficiency of human practical activities

Increased expressive power, as in the artificial languages invented by Tolkien and Burgess, or in the language of the Klingons, is an objective relatively easy to coated by means of literacy and within the literate experience, such languages are accepted primarily as artistic conventions Precision is the last quality they aies of sublilan, or better yet in the languages of co and transcending the assu es, from Cobol and Fortran to C, C++, Lisp, or Java, are accepted for their functionality They are not for poetry writing, as the fa a coes of never-failing univocality With such languages, we can control the function, and even the logic of the language These languages are conceived in a ned to opti the functions pursued are provability, optiics that can be used are classical propositonal logic, intuitionistic propositional logic,hue, so the nature of universality Dedicated, like e, Franois Sondre (1827) invented a language based on the assu boundaries aine a theory expressed as a melody, communication accomplished by music, or the uage enough room for expression and precision, but almatic dimension of human self-constitution If time is, as we know, encoded in music, the experience of space is only indirectly present Accordingly, its functioning ht address the universality of harory of so-called controlled languages is also establishi+ng itself A controlled language is a subset (constrained in its vocabulary, grae adapted to a certain activity Artificial languages are products inspired and e Their authors wanted to fix soeof their effort, we should look into how language relates the people constituted in the language to the world in which they live Let's start with the evolution of the word and its relation to the expression of thoughts and ideas, that is, from the univocal (one-to-one relation to what is expressed) to the ans participate in the production of ideas only to a sns are univocal Feathers are definitely not froed animals leave differentassignable to the sign) is a gradual acquisition and reflects the principle of retroaction of s, sounds, etc A drawing of an anis associated with the anie behavior, eneral) becae developht about by the practical experience of society confronted with new tasks related to its survival and further evolution The philosopher, for exae) but uses it in an uncommon way: metasemically, metaphorically, metaphysically Ancient philosophy, ie and literacy, is still so metaphoric that it can be read as literature, and actually was enjoyed as such Modern philosophy (post-Heidegger) sho relations (which it points out and dwells upon) have absorbed the related As a forumentation, freed of restrictions characteristic of literacy, but also so much less expressive than the philosophy of the written word and the endless interpretations it enerates its own motivations and justifications Its practical consequences, within a prag than those of literacy, diminish constantly

The distance between the verbal and the significance of the idea is itself a parameter of the evolution from nature to culture

Words such as space, time, matter,But once written, there is nothing left of the direct, probably intuitive, human experience of space and time, of experience with matter in its various concrete forms, or of the experience of , so)

Visual representations-other for-are closer to what they report about: the Cartesian coordinates for space, the clock for a cyclical perception of time, etc They express particular instances of relations in space or time, or particular aspects of matter or motion

The word is arbitrary in relation to the idea it e its life in instances of activity, is knowledge practically revealed in the order of nature or thought In expressing the idea, rational rigor and expressiveness collide Synthesizing ideas is an instance of the self-constitution of the hu to externalize theht) Once written, words not only defy the ephemerality of the sounds of speech, but also enter the real interpretations

These interpretations result fromatic contexts

To be literate e, but it also e to the experiences of the past in which its rules were shaped When spelling, for instance, is disassociated froin of the word, a totally arbitrary new reale is established, one in which transitory conventions replace permanency (or the illusion of permanency), and the appearance of super-temporality of ideas is questioned Each idea is the result of choices in a certain paradigm of existence Its concrete deterh its insertion in a praght be confirmed, contradicted (it becomes equivocal), or open to ive an exaes from its early embodiment in Greek society to its liberal application, and even self-negation, in the civilization of illiteracy It - the power of people-but in different contexts, depending on how people was defined and hoas exercised It s in its new contexts that so at all anymore

Literacy made communication of ideas possible within a scale of humankind well served by linear relations and in search of proportional growth But when ideas come to expression in a faster rhythuous stage, the er does justice either to their practical function or to the dynamics of an individual's continuous self-constitution Moreover, it seems that ideas themselves, as forms of human projection, are less necessary under the new projection of pragmatic circumstances we exahest contribution impacts today's society less and less We live in a world dominated by methods and products, within which previous ideas have, so it seee is reduced to infores, which keep eared towards itally disseuages that unify the increasing variety of rams we use in our new experiences on the World Wide Web Efficiency in this world refers to transactions which do not necessarily involve huents, active in business transactions of what e outcoents are endoith rules of reproduction, movement, fair trade, and can even be culturally identified Even so, the Netcono of such agents allows us to see how thereverts to its literal hts visible

At a n-the word, sentence, or text-stands is the sign of speech But writing ca this condition In prelinguistic forraphic representation had its object in reality-the re-presentation of the absent What is present need not be represented The direction impressed on visual representation is fro tendency of distancing in respect to the present and the direct, what I called the alienation of immediacy

Initial representations, part of a rather primitive repertory, have only an expressive function They retain information about the absent that is not seen (or heard, felt, ss and their environs to nature That which is co it, not what is actually seen The execution of the written sign is not its realization as inforraphic representations, sos (tools, artifacts) Whatis written, but what it ns-the alphabet, punctuation and diacritical

No ht, its stabilization co The present captured in writing loses its impact of immediate action No written word has ever reached the surface without being uttered and heard, that is, without being sensed The possibility of ned) stee within human praxis It is not accidental (cf Leroi-Gourhan) that spatial establishe-type settle (also spatial in nature) are synchronous But here a third cos, no s related to shelter and to work, needs to be acknowledged, too

This is the broader context leading to the great moment of Greek philosophy in the temporal context of alphabetization, and the cultural context of all kinds of forms of craftsmanshi+p, architecture probably in the lead Socrates, as the philosopher of thinking and discovering truth through dialogue, defended oral culture Or at least that is what Plato wanted us to believe when he reat artisans of Socrates' ti tools, creating all kinds of useful objects, writing is not a prerequisite Heuristics andhu new options, are essentially oral They presuppose the philosopher's, or the architect's, physical presence Not too ed since, if we consider how the disciplines of design and engineering are taught and exercised But a lot is changing, as design and engineering practical activities rely

Coineering or er in continuation of those founded on literacy